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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23639278">Wellspring</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad'>Gammarad</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Inception (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dream Pregnancy, M/M, Mpreg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 20:22:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23639278</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Such carefully laid plans, and everything seemed to work out. But weeks, months, after the whole job is over, Saito has a recurring dream that he can't shake.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dom Cobb/Saito</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Unusual_Bearings_2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wellspring</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyx_Sydin/gifts">Hyx_Sydin</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Fischer dream intervention had not entirely worked out the way he wanted, Saito thought as he plummeted helplessly into the lowest levels of the tiered dream world, the so-called Limbo. Most of it -- he thought Cobb might have been successful, so that was a consolation. Perhaps it would not be too bad. The deep levels of the dream were amenable to every pressure of Saito's mind. Here he could build himself whatever he wanted. </p><p>At first, Saito enjoyed himself in dream Limbo. He had no demands on his time and unlimited freedom to set the scene. His skill at lucid dreaming enabled him to influence, if not control, the people from his subconscious that populated the world he built. He thought he could survive this, and it would be worth it, as long as Cobb and his team had done the job.</p><p>That was what was important, Saito thought. Not himself as an individual, but his heritage, going back generations, and ideally going forward generations as well. His children should not grow up to be the last. Though Dominick Cobb was an American, he was an exile: no longer a seamless part of the machinery that was eating the world. For both Saito and Cobb, what was most important to each of them was their children. To make a beneficial exchange with another, there must be common ground, and that was the ground he had set all his hopes on.</p><p>He built the streets of Tokyo the way they had been in his father's youth, the lights and sounds he had grown up imagining as he listened to his father's stories. He rode down those streets on an impossible motorcycle out of a movie, faster and quieter than any real vehicle was in those years, but styled after the one he had wanted as a teenager. </p><p>Saito won most of the races, made money, had thrilling escapes from the not-especially-realistic yakuza who objected to his keeping their money. </p><p>But there was so much time. And there was no one here but him. </p><p>Alone, he struggled against the temptation to build places he remembered, places he missed, to dream the people he missed most. Bits of his memory started to slip away, little by little, as he refused to allow them to become presences.</p><p>It felt like a year, it felt like ten years, he had no idea how long he had been alone except that it was too long. Bored of winning, bored of fake thrills he knew couldn't hurt him, Saito let the dream go.</p><p>He found himself in a park. He had on exercise clothing, and figures trotted past him, on a run for their health. Saito had always exercised in a private, exclusive gym, never jogged on public streets. He did in this dream, apparently. The park was beautiful, and he had not made it. It could be a remnant of one of the other people sharing the dream, who had been here, it must be. He wondered which one's dreams he jogged through. The girl, perhaps, or the man with many faces? </p><p>Two men were jogging behind him and yet, when he slowed down, they did not pass by. When he sped up, running much faster than he thought he could if it weren't a dream place, they kept up. He began to feel alarmed, and when he did, he also felt himself slowing, as though running through water, a familiar feeling in dreams but one he should have been able to counter. </p><p>One of the men tripped him, the other covered his head with a bag. So he was being kidnapped. But these men, they still did not feel real, though they also did not feel like parts of his own subconscious. They were someone else's, he thought, attacking him as such creations did to strangers. He felt a light-headed wave of relief. He was not, after all, alone here.</p><p>The subconscious creations, rather than kill him, took him to a car. They pushed him into the back and pulled off the bag from his head. He was in a limousine. It looked, Saito thought, exactly like his own limousine. Had he dreamed this car?</p><p>There was a handsome man his own age sitting next to him in the back of his limousine. A real person, not a projection. The man pulled out a pistol and shot him between the eyes.</p><p>Immediately -- without a sense of pain, or death, or anything having happened at all, Saito woke up in bed. He opened his eyes. The plain white ceiling overhead was nothing he recognized. </p><p>"It didn't work," the man said, his voice full of resignation and concern. "I thought it might wake us up." The man came over to the bed, looked down into Saito's eyes, brushed his hair aside to look at his forehead -- to look at the place where he had shot Saito what seemed only moments ago. </p><p>The man turned toward the door. Saito was filled with the conviction that he was going to leave Saito alone in this strange hotel room. </p><p>He recognized this man, and yet he didn't. What Saito knew was that this man was the most real person here. The only, other than himself, real person here. The man took half a step, and Saito grabbed his arm. "Don't go," he said.</p><p>The man looked him in the eyes. "Do you recognize me?" he asked.</p><p>"You are the man who shot me." Saito sat up, felt dizzy, lay back down on the bed. The room spun. Spinning -- turning like a top -- there was a hidden meaning. He tried to remember. </p><p>"Shh," the man said. "Give yourself time to recover." He smoothed the hair back over Saito's forehead again, leaned down as if to look more closely at his forehead. Saito lifted his head and the man's lips met it in a kiss. </p><p>He felt something, as if -- as if a thought passed from the man's lips into his head, into his mind. A memory. A metal top, spinning forever, hidden away, this man's precious touchstone, a symbol he held dear. And a name. "Dominick Cobb."</p><p>"Yes. I will return for you when it is closer to the time we can leave. All right? Wait for me. Keep things together, Saito. I need you." He hesitated. "Only you can give me back my children. They're the most important thing to me. They're all I have. Please. You promised." The desperate love in Dominick Cobb's voice pierced Saito's heart. He too had children he loved more than anything else. They were the reason he had made this bargain, to keep the company his father had built from crumbling before they came into their inheritance, to preserve the world so that they could live in it and be happy. </p><p>If Dominick had saved Saito's children, he would return Dominick to his own. </p><p>A child. His child, and Dominick's child. </p><p>By the time Saito woke again, the man was gone. He had been real. Saito could almost remember his name. The memory that he was not alone, that when it was time, another real person would come for him, that was all that kept him sane in the long isolated time remaining in the depth of the dream. Not completely sane, but sane enough.</p><p>A great deal of time seemed to pass, though in absolute time as measured by clocks in the real world it was not very long.</p><p>Saito was ancient. It felt right; the emptiness seemed to stretch out forever in both directions, backward and forward, and that felt like he had always imagined old age would feel. So he was ninety, the daimyo of a castle, served by loyal men who would die for him. None of them was real.</p><p>But the man they had found on the beach, that was a new twist. With great effort he oriented himself to the discovery, to meet with this novelty, this stranger. It had been ... he had no idea how long since anyone new had come. It seemed that no one new had ever come to the island where his castle stood. He had not even known it was an island until he thought that. </p><p>The man who came in stirred a distant memory of youth. He had been young once, Saito knew. Forever ago and not long ago he had been young. "We were young men together," he said, and remembered the words, different but the same. </p><p>And every word the man said made him remember more. All pieces of the same memory, himself in a strange windy carriage that flew on a wing shaped like the sun, dismissing a traitor to this man with a gesture, inviting him ... Cobb. The name drifted into his mind like a samara spinning its way down to the earth. Spinning. A weighted top, whirling around and never stopping. </p><p>The whole room spun around Saito.</p><p>The stranger, no stranger at all, pulled a gun from his coat. Death meant nothing here; this was the deepest level, he remembered -- he remembered where he was, in the dream-depths, what Cobb would call Limbo, where death only restarted you. If he shot himself in the head, he would be young again. But he didn't need to shoot himself in the head. </p><p>Saito dreamed himself young again.</p><p>"Why did you take so long, Cobb?" His voice shifted from age to youth in the course of the sentence. </p><p>"I forgot for a while, too. And then -- I need to put the idea in your mind, Saito. To remind you, but it's dangerous. This idea, the last time I --" The young man, the other young man, stopped. His lips tightened, and he went pale around the mouth. "Remember it was my idea. That you and I are real, the rest of this is not. We are --"</p><p>"We are on a train," Saito said, remembering an ache in his wrist. Or was that some other time? It was all mixed up in his mind.</p><p>His expression had too much pity in it for Saito's comfort. But instead of correcting Saito, he only said, "Soon we will wake up. Our mission accomplished."</p><p>"And I will honor our agreement, as you have done." Saito took the other man's hand in both of his, holding it tightly. This was not a business agreement, to be made with a light touch of the hands. It was more, he felt it, though he did not quite remember --</p><p>Dominick pulled him by the hand he held into an embrace. Americans, so over-friendly, he thought, and then a sense memory of lying still, while this man's lips softly pressed a kiss to his forehead, shivered through his entire body. </p><p>Their faces were close together. Saito had been alone for so, so long, and here was a person, a real, other person. With lips that had kissed him. He was still a moment in Dominick's embrace, and then Saito's loneliness overcame his reserve, and he kissed the only other person in the world. </p><p>Layer after layer of dream unwound itself, collapsing into the void as the drug Yusuf had created wore off and waking became possible.</p><p>When Saito woke on the plane, he remembered very little of the layered dreams. Mostly he remembered being shot and dying in the back of a van as it raced through a crowded city, a little he remembered being in a hotel and lying in a bed -- very tenuously he remembered something about... a ski lodge? And -- he remembered, most surely, that the inception had been a success and Cobb had planted the idea in the Fischer heir. </p><p>He picked up his phone and made the call that would allow the man back into the United States without fear of arrest. He felt a great deal of satisfaction at that, and wondered at it. Certainly it was good to fulfill a bargain, but why did it elate him so much? Saito chalked it up to a remainder of the strangeness of the hours of drug-induced vivid dreaming. </p><p>And went home to Japan on the airline he now owned.</p><p>Over the next month, Saito ran his business and lived his life, mostly in his home in Japan. He began to have strange dreams that he oddly did not remember well. For a week straight, he woke up feeling nauseated, a sensation that did not fade until he had his morning tea. </p><p>He settled himself with meditation the next night, focused on lucid dreaming, on being sure he would be aware of any dream he had. He dropped into natural, restful sleep. Dreams flitted past, ordinary ones, walking in a garden, sitting behind his desk, shopping at a store filled with festival clothing. Then longer, more involved dreams, where he was coaxing a plant to grow, riding a motorcycle across an ever-lengthening bridge until he took control of the dream-environment and held the bridge's length fixed until he had crossed it. The vibration of the motorcycle's engine under him eased the nausea. Beyond the bridge was the garden. He leaned the motorcycle against a low wall and walked through the garden, touching a flower here and there, breathing in the fresh air perfumed with growing things, nausea disappearing entirely in the green scent. He came to a sliding door and entered his house. "Saito, you're home," said a welcoming voice. Coming into the room from somewhere else inside was Dominick Cobb.</p><p>Adrenaline surged through him and he woke, blinking. </p><p>The next night, it took no effort to realize when Saito found himself in the same dream. "I've made you miso soup," the man said, and held out a bowl. Saito sat at the kitchen table and Cobb set the steaming soup down in front of him. </p><p>He could change this so it was a pretty lady serving him the soup, Saito thought. A Japanese lady, maybe a South American one? But he didn't mind it being Dominick. Why waste the effort? "Thank you," he said, and he wasn't sure if in the dream he was speaking Japanese or if this dream version of Dominick understood Japanese, but he was using the form of "you" that he would with someone he was close to. A good friend, perhaps. Did English have those forms of "you" in this dream, too? He couldn't remember. All languages should. The soup was delicious. He had had feasts in dreams before, multiple courses prepared by famous chefs, or imaginary impossible desserts that towered to the ceiling and were frozen around melting warm cores, but the soup was warm, comfort food, and it was the best dream meal he could remember.</p><p>Saito remembered that dream when he woke. His stomach felt full. He didn't feel sick at all.</p><p>For nearly a month, he had dreams like that almost every night. By rights he should tell his doctor, the one he had on retainer to take care of him should some insanity appear out of his dreams, especially after the subjective years he had spent in Limbo on the inception job. Subjective years with no one but Dominick Cobb for company. No wonder his subconscious was bringing Cobb back almost every night.</p><p>It did not seem worth bringing to a doctor's attention. They were not bad dreams. </p><p>A technique of lucid dreaming is to think about the thing one desires to dream about before falling asleep. Each night, Saito set out to create a dream for himself. He tried simple dreams, dinner at one of his favorite restaurants or a stroll along a high bridge overlooking beautiful scenery. He tried complex dreams, the plots of yakuza movies, dreams like folk tales reimagined, travels through space in fantastical ships. And he dreamed of all those things, but somehow, the night always made its way to a dream where he was in his own house and Dominick Cobb was there with him. Usually cooking for him. Saito saw himself getting fatter in those dreams. </p><p>He recalled a conversation with one of Dominick's associates. "Don't think about elephants," the man had said. Then he had asked what Saito was thinking about. </p><p>"Elephants," Saito had replied. Of course. The more he tried to get rid of the recurring dream, the more it stayed in his mind and his subconscious circled back to it. Better to ignore it and it would fade on its own.</p><p>That night Saito did not try to set himself anything specific to dream. Let his subconscious work out what it needed to, he thought. </p><p>
  <i>The house was filled with a wonderful aroma. Classic marinara sauce bubbled in a big pot on the stove. Dominick stirred it with a wooden spoon. In another pot, water was simmering. Saito felt a stab of anxiety. He turned away from the man cooking in his kitchen, went to the privacy of the toilet. </i>
</p><p><i>Saito pulled a device like a thermometer out of a box. This was impossible, he thought. But he had to know.</i> The lucidly dreaming Saito wondered what it was he had to know, and felt a sudden dread mixed with anxious eagerness swell within.<i> He pissed on the thermometer-thing, and its two little windows slowly filled with lettering. Test works, said one. Pregnant, said the other. </i></p><p>
  <i>"Once more we have done the impossible," Saito said to himself. Those were the words. He knew if he told Dominick, there would be no more wonderful meals together. Very well. He would enjoy this final one. Pasta was so delicious.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Saito washed his hands and went back to the kitchen. </i>
</p><p><i>"Does my host feel unwell?" </i> Dominick was definitely speaking Japanese. Saito wondered why, when in their real interactions they had always conversed in English. </p><p>
  <i>"Well enough to enjoy the meal you have made," Saito said. "Thank you for making my house so welcoming." They ate together, enjoying the food. Saito began to feel better. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>He was not going to tell Dominick what the pregnancy test had revealed. Thinking this, Saito pressed his lips together. "What is wrong?" Dominick asked.</i>
</p><p><i>The words he had prepared slipped out against his will.</i> The lucid dreamer had lost control entirely. <i>"Once more we have done the impossible," Saito found himself saying. "A pregnancy. Two men. Is there nothing beyond our power?"</i></p><p>
  <i>He expected Dominick to flee, or maybe turn against him in anger. Or to blanch in fear. None of these. Instead, a wide smile, and Saito was swept into a warm embrace. "Congratulations. How wonderful." </i>
</p><p>Saito woke, the warmth of being in Dominick's arms lingering. </p><p>What <i>was</i> his subconscious trying to tell him with these dreams?</p><p>Was it that he missed his children? He knew they were safe and well cared for. Perhaps he related to Dominick, who he had reunited with his own? Dreams were strange things, their symbolism often obscure. Saito had important business to attend to. He had no time to puzzle over strange dreams. </p><p>His mind kept creeping back to it, though. Especially when the paperwork crossed his desk for the former subsidiary of Fischer Morrow that his company had purchased. An event that could only have occurred thanks to the impossible feat of inception accomplished by Dominick Cobb and his team.</p><p>Saito stamped his seal on each page of the contract. The red ink dyed two of his fingertips when he touched the ink pad by accident, a mistake he had not made in years. He felt joy rather than dismay, a moment of celebration, a happy accident; this was a lucky moment, not an unlucky one, he felt sure. He touched the reddened fingers to his forehead. </p><p>A memory drifted through his mind, one he couldn't place. Someone's lips warm on his skin, just there where his fingers touched. He thought he might look in a mirror to see if he had got any of the red hanko ink on his forehead, but he didn't. He sat and let his mind drift, enjoying the relief he felt that this had happened, the future he had wanted was on its way.</p><p>Every week or two for the next several months, the dream recurred. It seemed to have joined his regular rotation of common dreams, and he found it soothing, especially as the breakup of the Fischer Morrow empire proceeded slowly yet inexorably. Each time he was a little bigger in the dream, but any discomfort was gone. And there was always Dominick there, cooking for him. After he ate, Dominick often put his hand over where the baby was and murmured to it. These words were never quite audible and Saito didn't, in the dreams, mind not understanding. </p><p>Then came a different dream. </p><p>
  <i>Saito was reclining on a padded chair, his clothes in disarray, shirt unbuttoned, trousers loose around his thighs. Dominick was in a chair next to him, holding his hand as Yusuf, in yellow scrubs, swiped an ultrasound wand against his belly. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>The pregnancy had advanced in the recurring dreams to the second trimester, the best part of any pregnancy. "Take a look," Yusuf said. "Everything looks healthy." Saito could see the screen, and on it, the outline of a fetus. It looked just as he expected. He had been where Dominick was now when his first child was at the same stage of life. For the first time, it had seemed real that he was to become a father. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>"That's our baby," Dominick said, squeezing the hand he held. Saito's breath caught as he felt the baby kick and at the same time saw the movement on the ultrasound's screen. He felt the warm weight of Dominick's affectionate gaze. "Beautiful."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"So is your baby," Yusuf said, barking a laugh. "You are very fortunate. A pregnancy such as this has many dangers. But I see no trouble here."</i>
</p><p><i>Just as the words were said, Saito felt a stabbing pain inside his abdomen.</i> He woke gasping, the pain vanished with the dream. But the peace he had felt up until then was gone.</p><p>He thought about going to a doctor. There was a psychologist trained in the Western style of medicalized psychology he kept on staff, who might determine if he needed therapy or drugs for this strange continuing dream. But Saito did not feel inclined to consult such a person. Instead, he put on traditional clothing and visited a shrine. </p><p>A shrine that specialized in prayers for safe pregnancy, delivery, and safety at home. </p><p>It had been many months since Saito visited a shrine outside of a major holiday event. He did not often see them on ordinary days without crowds. It was unexpectedly peaceful and welcome to wash, give his offering, bow and clap and pray. </p><p>No one disturbed him or came to inquire what he was praying for. He had never been here, and they did not recognize him as wealthy and famous. Perhaps they knew he must be someone of importance from the fact that he had been driven here, that his driver and another man stood waiting at the expensive automobile for him, conversing quietly; Saito thought they must. But the shrine attendants held their peace, the priest kept to the visitors who wished for his attention, and Saito left without having spoken to anyone but the kami. </p><p>If he felt that stabbing pain while awake, though, he resolved, he would see a doctor. About the physical complaint, not the dreams. </p><p>When he arrived back home, Saito asked his cook to make him the soup he had several times dreamed that Dominick made. It tasted very good, but it did not feel the same at all to eat it as it had in his dreams.</p><p>
  <i>"Are you all right?" Dominick was asking, as Saito tried to straighten up. He had been doubled over, it seemed, but he didn't know why. Pain? A cramp? Exercises?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Why wouldn't I be?" Saito asked. He put one arm protectively around the curve of his belly. "We're both doing fine."</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Dominick put one arm around Saito. "Let me help." </i>
</p><p><i>Saito took a step, but as he put his foot down to take his weight, the stabbing sensation returned.</i> He remembered this same pain from the earlier dream. I'll go to a doctor in the morning, the dreamer thought, and the dream took control again. <i>He leaned heavily on Dominick's arm, and let himself be helped to a firm, upright chair. </i></p><p>
  <i>"I hope this one's comfortable enough. And you can get up from it more easily." Dominick's eyes swept toward the softer, more cozy chair where Saito usually liked to relax. The pain subsided, though Saito's back ached. Fluttering kicks started, felt inside and even making soft movements of the cloth of his shirt. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>"Baby's active," Saito said. </i>
</p><p>
  <i>Dominick pressed his hand against the movement. "So strong." He smiled. He was standing close to the chair where Saito sat. When he leaned over to touch Saito's belly where the baby kicked, his lips grazed Saito's hair like a featherweight kiss.</i>
</p><p>The doctor, Saito thought, waking. The dream might be trying to tell me something is wrong. He rolled over, tried to fall back asleep, but couldn't. He knew that wasn't what the dreams were about. He was perfectly healthy. There was no pain when he was awake. </p><p>It had to be about Cobb.</p><p>For the next few days, Saito thought about calling Cobb on the telephone. He found the number, even dialed half of it more than once. But he always hung up the phone before completing the call.</p><p>He owned an airline. He had bought it for the inception job, so in a way, he had bought it specifically for Dominick Cobb. </p><p>Saito made arrangements, and the next evening he was on a flight to California.</p><p>Cobb's situation was not too bad. Saito had seen to it he was cleared of suspicion about his wife's death, which was officially ruled as suicide. The leading American dream-sharing psychologist and his team had been sent to give Cobb whatever treatment they thought necessary. He had custody of his children back, and they were living with him in his house. Their family's house.</p><p>The reports from the psychologist that Saito had arranged to be given were promising, but living in the house with the ghost of their mother lingering could not be good for the children or for their father, he thought. The entire United States must hold bad memories of persecution for Dominick, and children, well, they adapt easily to new things, new languages.</p><p>Saito slept on the flight to be fresh when he arrived on Cobb's doorstep. </p><p>
  <i>His whole body ached, but the deed was done. Saito lay in a hospital bed, clean and fresh, a sleeping infant in his arms. The angelic face and closed eyes and tiny pursed smile were new and yet familiar. The baby's warm weight was the most wonderful thing he'd ever felt.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"What perfect fingers," Dominick said, touching the baby's tiny knuckles gently. "Congratulations. Again, we have done the impossible. I believe it may become a habit." </i>
</p><p>
  <i>"People have babies every day," Saito said, but it was not really a protest. He was not just any person who had given birth. His baby was extraordinary. Dominick and he had created not just a new life, but a new world for that life to be lived in.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>"It's baby clothes," Ariadne said, handing Dominick a wrapped gift box. "Don't get too excited."</i>
</p><p><i>"Impossible," said Saito, </i> and woke. </p><p>He had been wrong, of course. He was already too excited. It would be important to be calm, to present Dominick with a convincing offer. One he would not turn down. </p><p>In the last hour of the flight, Saito's mind turned to the first time they had met. That had also been in a dream.</p><p>This is the man who can give me what I want, Saito had thought, sitting at a dream-conference table across from him. The new world I want. And he will do it, because there is something I can give him that he wants. His children. He knew the world around them, that felt so real, was a dream. The man in front of him that he looked at so hungrily, disguising it as best he could with a veneer of suspicion, was a dream, pretending to be someone he was not, trying to steal from Saito because Saito had arranged for it to happen that way, a test for them both. 

</p><p>The test had its dangers, but those didn't matter compared to the change that the world had to see if his company was to endure, if the world was not to be taken over by empires, by the West, by the energy oligarchs who hungered to devour more every year. For this, he had arranged for Cobb to be hired by Cobol. He knew Cobb would not want to target him; he was too clearly a lucid dreamer and experienced dream-sharer, and Cobb's research would have uncovered his pastimes. He had had to corner Cobb into it. He had succeeded, and been impressed. </p><p>The plane landed, and a car came as pre-arranged to convey Saito to Dominick's house. His security and the nanny he had hired went in a second car that took a more direct route. Saito rehearsed what he planned to say in his mind. He reminded himself to speak English; whatever had happened in dreams, he knew Dominick was not fluent in Japanese. </p><p>Saito wondered if he would learn. </p><p>His car pulled into the driveway of the American house. He waited until the driver opened the door for him, stood, nodded to his security team member who was stationed at the front door, and walked into the Cobbs' home.</p><p>Dominick and his children stood together. Dominick and his son looked wary, but the girl did not. She seemed curious and alert. "Mr. Saito." Dominick's voice was tense. </p><p>Saito felt an answering tension in his gut, but he refused to show it, made himself speak in a calm and friendly manner. "We have known each other too well to stand on such ceremony. Phillipa, James, pleased to meet you both. Dom." Saito knew his voice caught on the nickname, but went forward, at least keeping his expression controlled, even if he couldn't keep all the hoarseness from his tone. "It has been months. I am glad to see you well."</p><p>Dominick's eyes widened. He said Saito's personal name. It felt shockingly intimate the way he said it, without an honorific, though Saito knew that in English that meant nothing of the kind. "What brings you here?" Dominick asked.</p><p>"I have come to make you another offer," Saito said. Most of his rehearsed lines suddenly felt wrong. An ocean of possibility and he must stay afloat it in it or drown. So it always was, at crucial moments in his life. "You are doing nothing here. You have your children -- and so it is a very good quality of nothing. But this is no place to keep them."</p><p>"This is their home. My home," Dominick said. He regarded Saito with narrowed eyes. "No project you might offer me could lure me away from them again." His hand tightened on James' shoulder. Saito saw his knuckles whiten. </p><p>James did not seem to mind. His father was not hurting him. He leaned close to Dominick. Phillipa came over to Saito. "Are you from Hawaii?" she asked him brightly.</p><p>"I am from Japan. Would you like to come to Japan, Phillipa? You and James and your father too, and see my home?" Saito smiled down at the little girl.</p><p>"It's an island like Hawaii, isn't it? Are the beaches pretty?" Phillipa's eyes lit up. "Can we, Daddy?"</p><p>"If your father agrees. Mrs. Delsig?" The nanny Saito had hired, a kind looking middle aged woman who was fluent in both English and Japanese, came to the door of the room. "Phillipa and James, Mrs. Delsig will watch you while your father and I discuss the details." Saito looked at Dominick, who shrugged a temporary acceptance. </p><p>When the children walked over to the woman, Dominick took Saito to his office. It was a smaller room off the front hall. Saito nodded to his security team member at the front door as he preceded Dominick into the room. His security was tense at the sight of him going into a close quarters with an untrusted foreigner, especially one who they knew he had got out from under a murder charge, but Saito knew whatever danger he was in had to be risked. This conversation would not work without the two of them being alone. </p><p>"What is this really about?" Dominick said immediately when he had closed the door.</p><p>"When we were in the dream together," Saito began. He paused. He turned over his planned lines in his mind, trying to find the one that felt right. "You know it seemed like a long time to me. I don't remember it all, but I think I became very old. And I feel sure it was you who brought me back safely, somehow." </p><p>"I wasn't sure I had done it until you made the phone call. But that was the deal. I kept my side of it, you kept yours. What are you here about now?" Dominick looked, to Saito's surprise, guilty. </p><p>Saito felt a moment of unease that shifted to anticipation. "Can you tell me how you did it? Because I think you may have left something behind," he added, intuition clicking into place as it often did when he made an important deal. Saito's intuition was a gift that had helped make his fortune. </p><p>The look of guilt intensified. Dominick stared off into a corner of the room, unable to meet Saito's eyes. "I was as careful as I could be. But I had to get you out of there. I had no choice. I'm sorry."</p><p>"We were the only ones in that world," Saito said, his voice low. "When two are alone together for so long a time, things happen, things that otherwise might be impossible." He reached his hand toward Dominick's, his breath catching in his throat. </p><p>Dominick stared at him, put his hand out for Saito as if to shake. Saito caught Dominick's hand in both of his, turned it over and wrapped it in a warm grasp. "We did do something everyone thought impossible." Dominick's voice sounded strange, some emotion in it Saito couldn't identify. "Everyone but us."</p><p>"You left something behind in me," Saito said. "Now I need you to come to Japan. Bring your children. You will all be welcome in my house. Accommodation you could never buy for yourself. I will educate them, and you will be free to do as you wish. They will love Japan."</p><p>"Are you saying you want to fund my research? I don't need to come to Japan for that. There are better research centers here, or in Paris." Dominick didn't want to resist him, Saito thought, but he wasn't sure. He did see that guilt, though. </p><p>"You know what you did to me," Saito said. "Now. I want you in Japan. I don't like America enough to live here. And your government is considering making dreamsharing illegal in your country. I will set up a research facility for you, if that is what you wish to do with your time."</p><p>"You could," Dominick admitted. "You did buy an airline," he muttered. Saito ignored that. "And you were right. This house, it's full of memories I don't need all around me. It's difficult." He still wasn't able to look directly at Saito. "Yes, all right. Yes. I know what I did to you. I didn't dare make it your own idea, but you had to believe. So I.." his lips opened, then closed silently. </p><p>"Your idea gave me dreams for the last ten months," Saito said. "Gestating like a child in the womb."</p><p>"Ten months?" Dominick, surprised, looked at Saito. "Why an extra month?"</p><p>"Ten months is the usual," Saito said. </p><p>"I'm sure it's nine." Dominick's laugh, so close, made Saito smile at him the way Americans smiled. He had always liked that about Americans, the way they smiled. Dominick's smile was a prime example of it, the beautiful teeth the man had, so white and even. "I guess it's ten months in Japan?"</p><p>"Ten months everywhere," Saito said. "Now, I will have my people pack your things and your children's things. All three of you can accompany me this evening. My plane is fully staffed and we can have a meal aboard." </p><p>"We can't just leave like that," Dominick protested. </p><p>Saito was pleased that he wasn't refusing to come at all. If he had it down to the timing, he had won. "I have arranged for passport photos to be taken en route, your forms are already submitted and only awaiting the photographs, your government's rush fees are paid. My staff can contact their schools and physicians and transfer everything necessary. It will all be taken care of."</p><p>Dominick looked down to where Saito was still holding his hand. "You really have everything mapped out."</p><p>"I have had ten months," Saito told him. He stepped closer, keeping hold of Dominick's hand so he couldn't back away easily. He brought his face close, to where it would be a matter of only a slight movement for their lips to meet. It was too soon for that, he thought, but this way he would plant the idea in Dominick's mind. </p><p>That was how these things worked, he had learned.</p>
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